We’re celebrating another fun adoption update this week- so, of course, I wanted to share it here, too!
The last time I blogged about where we were at, I told you we were just about to enter phase two of our process: Immigration.
Basically, this step involves getting all sorts of paperwork together so that you can have each document notarized and authenticated at both the county and state levels. The paperwork consists of things like (original copies of) birth certificates, marriage license, psychological exams, medical exams, immigration forms, reference letters, etc.
Once they’re all gathered, and notarized, and authenticated- our adoption agency (Lifeline) will put them all together, along with our home study, and that will form our dossier.
The goal was to get our dossier to Three Angels (the orphanage we’re hoping to adopt from) sometime this Fall. Then they would, in turn, submit it to the Haitian government- who will match us with one of the children currently living at the Angel House orphanage.
But here’s the thing: the Haitian government is in the process of passing some new adoption-related laws, so they haven’t been accepting submissions for the past several months.
BUT- our (new) caseworker, Meredith, called last week to tell us that there might be an opportunity for us to get submitted this month!
No one really knows how long the window of opportunity will be open, so we did a lot of dashing around the state of Alabama to get our paperwork authenticated in various counties last week.
(that’s sweet Meredith in the upper right!)
As of today, our authenticated documents are at the Haitian Consulate in Miami and our home study is being translated to French. We’re hoping Lifeline will have everything back by Friday so that our dossier can all travel to Three Angels in Haiti sometime next week!
Once it’s there, it’ll have to go through a legalization process at Three Angels, and then *hopefully* we’ll be able to get submitted into IBESR’s system before the submission window closes again for a while.
If we DO get submitted, the next step would be to get matched with one of these precious kiddos:
Thanks to social media, I know that at least six of the children above are in the process of being adopted because I’ve had the pleasure of meeting four of their Moms online over the past couple of months. Connecting with them every week has been such a blessing! We’re all at different stages in the process, so I am really learning a lot and feel so thankful for their friendship! One couple traveled to Three Angels not long ago, and it’s been so fun to hear their stories and see photos of them with the children.
I always get emotional when I think about how Amazing this process is and how HUGE this Gift is. I mean, that a (big) country would allow (little) me to be someone’s parent.
WILD!
Amazing, awesome, wild!
Hopefully I’ll have another exciting update to post within the next month or so. ‘Til then, thank you so much for swinging by today, and for taking the time to read about this really special time in our lives. 🙂
PS- If you’d like to check out my past adoption posts, click here: ADOPTION